Dissociative women's experiences of self-cutting
pp. 209-225
in: Ronald Valle (ed), Phenomenological inquiry in psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1998Abstract
This research was developed to discover the essence of the phenomenon of nonsuicidal, self-cutting behavior among highly dissociative persons. Because of their own personal fears grounded in a lack of understanding, therapists, emergency room personnel, and crisis intervention workers often back away from or are ill prepared to help nonsuicidal self-cutters who have dissociative disorders. Subsequently, professional ignorance about self-cutting often leads self-cutters to withdrawal, isolation, and increased shame and guilt. Many of the women who participated in this study had not revealed their self-cutting behaviors to anyone except their therapist; often, their therapists had not asked for details about their cutting behaviors. In fact, I heard three of these women say, "No one ever asked me about this."